Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TO WILLIAM JEFFREYS, CHAPLAINE TO THE LORD AMBASSADOUR IN SPAINE, by MICHAEL DRAYTON Poem Explanation Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: My noble friend, you challenge me to write Last Line: And so my jeffreyes for this time adue. Subject(s): News | ||||||||
My noble friend, you challenge me to write To you in verse, and often you recite, My promise to you, and to send you newes; As 'tis a thing I very seldome use, And I must write of State, if to Madrid, A thing our Proclamations here forbid, And that word State such Latitude doth beare, As it may make me very well to feare To write, nay speake at all, these let you know Your power on me, yet not that I will showe The love I beare you, in that lofty height, So cleere expression, or such words of weight, As into Spanish if they were translated, Might make the Poets of that Realme amated; Yet these my least were, but that you extort These numbers from me, when I should report In home-spunne prose, in good plaine honest words The newes our wofull England us affords. The Muses here sit sad, and mute the while; A sort of swine unseasonably defile Those sacred springs, which from the by-clift hill Dropt their pure Nectar into every quill; In this with State, I hope I doe not deale, This onely tends the Muses common-weale. What canst thou hope, or looke for from his pen, Who lives with beasts, though in the shapes of men, And what a poore few are we honest still, And dare be so, when all the world is ill. I finde this age of ours markt with this fate, That honest men are still precipitate Under base villaines, which till th'earth can vent This her last brood, and wholly hath them spent, Shall be so; then in revolution shall Vertue againe arise by vices fall; But that shall I not see, neither will I Maintaine this, as one doth a Prophesie, That our King James to Rome shall surely goe, And from his chaire the Pope shall overthrow. But o this world is so given up to hell, That as the old Giants, which did once rebell, Against the Gods, so this now-living race Dare sin, yet stand, and Jeere heaven in the face. But soft my Muse, and make a little stay, Surely thou art not rightly in thy way. To my good Jeffrayes was not I about To write, and see, I suddainely am out; This is pure Satire, that thou speak'st, and I Was first in hand to write an Elegie. To tell my countreys shame I not delight, But doe bemoane't I am no Democrite: O God, though Vertue mightily doe grieve For all this world, yet will I not beleeve But that shees faire and lovely, and that she So to the period of the world shall be; Else had she beene forsaken (sure) of all, For that so many sundry mischiefes fall Upon her dayly, and so many take Armes up against her, as it well might make Her to forsake her nature, and behind, To leave no step for future time to find, As she had never beene, for he that now Can doe her most disgrace, him they alow The times chiefe Champion, and he is the man, The prize, and Palme that absolutely wanne, For where Kings Clossets her free seat hath bin She neere the Lodge, not suffered is to Inne, For ignorance against her stands in state, Like some great porter at a Pallace gate; So dull and barbarous lately are we growne, And there are some this slavery that have sowne, That for mans knowledge it enough doth make, If he can learne, to read an Almanacke; By whom that trash of Amadis de Gaule, Is held an author most authenticall, And things we have, like Noblemen that be In little time, which I have hope to see Upon their foot-clothes, as the streets they ride To have their hornebookes at their girdles ti'd, But all their superfluity of spight On vertues handmaid Poesy doth light, And to extirpe her all their plots they lay, But to her ruine they shall misse the way, For tis alone the Monuments of wit, Above the rage of Tyrants that doe sit, And from their strength, not one himselfe can save, But they shall tryumph o'r his hated grave. In my conceipt, friend, thou didst never see A righter Madman then thou hast of me, For now as Elegiack I bewaile These poore base times; then suddainely I raile And am Satirick, not that I inforce My selfe to be so, but even as remorse, Or hate, in the proud fulnesse of their hight Master my fancy, just so doe I write. But gentle friend as soone shall I behold That stone of which so many have us tould, (Yet never any to this day could make) The great Elixar, or to undertake The Rose-crosse knowledge, which is much like that A Tarrying-iron for fooles to labour at, As ever after I may hope to see, (A plague upon this beastly world for me,) Wit so respected as it was of yore, And if hereafter any it restore, It must be those that yet for many a yeare, Shall be unborne that must inhabit here, And such in vertue as shall be asham'd Almost to heare their ignorant Grandsires nam'd, With whom so many noble spirits then liv'd, That were by them of all reward depriv'd. My noble friend, I would I might have quit This age of these, and that I might have writ, Before all other, how much the brave pen, Had here bin honoured of the English men; Goodnesse and knowledge, held by them in prise, How hatefull to them Ignorance and vice, But it falls out the contrary is true, And so my Jeffreyes for this time adue. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...WE BILLION CHEERED by GLYN MAXWELL THOSE SEINFELD DAYS WHEN NOTHING HAPPENS EXCEPT I LOVE YOU by E. ETHELBERT MILLER THEN AND NOW by CECIL DAY LEWIS AFTER THE NEWSCAST by ANSELM HOLLO INFO; FOR JOE CARDARELLI by ANSELM HOLLO TURN OFF THE NEWS by ANSELM HOLLO THE NEWS PHOTO by DAVID IGNATOW CANZONET: TO HIS COY LOVE by MICHAEL DRAYTON |
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